J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Mortlake and Pulborough Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge 1825
D18706
Turner Bequest CCXIII 1
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Red’, ‘[?w...]’, ‘[...]’ and ‘Blue’ towards top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘1’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXIII – 1’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is south-east over the River Thames to the upstream side of Old London Bridge, with a further arch continued to the left a little way across the inside front cover opposite (D18706). The main feature of the drawing is the large marquee erected over the coffer-dam around the site of the southernmost pier of the new London Bridge, for the foundation stone ceremony held on the riverbed on 15 June 1825. Connecting the marquee with the parapet of the existing bridge is the curving shape of a covered walkway, and above fly several large flags and bunting, around which Turner has made colour notes.
In his 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, Finberg tentatively interpreted the shape of the marquee, with its prominent flags, as a ‘state barge’.1 In an unpublished note, he suggested that the occasion was ‘?laying foundation stone of new bridge [?19] June 1825’,2 and a detailed examination of the drawings on adjacent pages and at the other end of the sketchbook appears to bear this out. The event and the other studies are discussed in the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.648.
2
Undated MS note in an interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, opposite p.648.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-london-bridge-foundation-stone-ceremony-the-marquee-r1172828, accessed 23 April 2024.